1. Victor Gruen is noted for his urban revitalization proposals, described in his writings and applied in master plans such as for Fort Worth, Texas, Kalamazoo, Michigan and Fresno, California.
13 Facts About Victor Gruen
1. 2.
Victor Gruen was born on July 18,1903, in a middle-class Jewish family in Vienna, Austria.
3.
Victor Gruen worked under Peter Behrens, a leading German architect.
4.
Victor Gruen's firm specialized in remodeling of shops and apartments.
5.
Victor Gruen was naturalized as a US citizen in 1943.
6.
Victor Gruen was the principal architect for a luxury housing development built on the 48-acre site of Boston, Massachusetts' former West End neighborhood.
7.
In 1956, Victor Gruen drafted a comprehensive revitalization plan for the central business district of downtown Fort Worth, Texas, but most components of the plan were never realized.
8.
Walid Jabri, the architect and structural engineer, designed the 55,000 square-meter business complex Centre Gefinor, which was built in the late 1960s on Rue Clemenceau in Beirut, Lebanon for which Victor Gruen designed the complete commercial area on the ground floor and the mezzanine after the completion of the skeleton.
9.
Victor Gruen designed the Greengate Mall in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, which opened in 1965, as well as the Lakehurst Mall in 1971 for Waukegan, Illinois.
10.
Victor Gruen was married four times and had two children.
11.
Victor Gruen's book The Heart of our Cities: The Urban Crisis, Diagnosis and Cure was a major influence on Walt Disney's city planning ambitions and his ideas for the original EPCOT.
12.
In 1963, on his 21st birthday, his son New York attorney Michael S Gruen was given a painting "Schloss Kammer am Attersee II" by Gustav Klimt.
13.
Kemija Victor Gruen claimed that if the painting was to be given after death, even if such arrangement was made years earlier, then the will, not a letter, would be instructive as to disposition.